Chris Wilson, the Youtuber

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Sarno#0493 wrote:

My Thoughts on Diablo II: Reign of the Warlock, Sarno#0493 Being My Favourite Community Member, And Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything You Read in Forum Posts
--Krillson

https://youtu.be/c0wvInEE5Fo

Granny approves ;)

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Sarno#0493 wrote:

My Thoughts on Diablo II: Reign of the Warlock, Sarno#0493 Being My Favourite Community Member, And Why You Shouldn’t Believe Everything You Read in Forum Posts
--Krillson

https://youtu.be/c0wvInEE5Fo

I found his insight about the paid QoL interesting. Never thought about it, but it makes sense to keep the old version "vanilla".
Overall I'm happy D2 gets a new expansion and I can't wait for the ladder reset to try the new class. Hopefully enough people buy into that so Blizzard has a reason to develop more content for D2 in the future.
My copium view is that they are testing the waters and not just try to capitalize on nostalgia :)

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Sadaukar#2191 wrote:

Overall I'm happy D2 gets a new expansion and I can't wait for the ladder reset to try the new class. Hopefully enough people buy into that so Blizzard has a reason to develop more content for D2 in the future.
My copium view is that they are testing the waters and not just try to capitalize on nostalgia :)

I wonder how prevalent that view is throughout the community.

While the man certainly did nothing to help himself, Jay Wilson and - by some extension - the rest of his D3 team were far from popular, and there appeared to be many people who viewed them as undeserving of working on any entry in the Diablo franchise.

People speak of the D2R's team respect for the original - which is true, and palpable. But in working so hard to ensure that people can always opt-out of changes if there would like to, they are arguably exposing a certain timidness. And the more new content they seek to add, the more technical debt they will accumulate attempting to maintain compatibility with the version of the game from before their changes. It's hard to see how that would remain tenable forever.

While one option would be for them to ship two separate binaries, I also wonder how the community would react to new content to Diablo II becoming the norm. I suspect some would be open to the occasional tasteful change (e.g. the graphics), but potentially draw the line at the D2R team seeking to completely take over D2 and essentially assume the mantle of its development team.

In terms of Activision Blizzard King Microsoft's perspective, I also suspect that - while unceasingly loyal - the Diablo II community is likely viewed as being one with a very real ceiling due to the inherent age of the title, and the lack of certain... 'modern day sensibilities' being off-putting to many younger gamers. Considering they have a CEO who would appear to believe any dollar spent on gaming is much better """invested""" in AI, I don't know how high on their priorities it would be to retain a development team indefinitely for work on a multi-decade old game.

In hindsight, I suspect D2R was building towards the idea they would have some sort of celebration (e.g. release paid content) of Blizzard's & Diablo's birthdays, and I doubt it will go much further. The business case for it is uncertain - and the community, while devoted, is also fantastically fickle. One 'wrong' addition or change, and the D2R team could lose the community's support forever.